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Comparing File Size and Memory Consumption: Qt Widgets vs. Qt Quick with QML

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Qt  is a powerful cross-platform framework used for developing applications with intuitive user interfaces. It provides two main approaches for UI development: Qt Widgets , which follows a traditional imperative model with C++-based UI components, and Qt Quick which uses QML , a declarative language designed for fluid, modern interfaces alongside the custom QJSEngine for frontend JavaScript interactions. Both offer unique advantages, but they also differ in terms of performance, resource usage, and application footprint. QT Widgets and QT Quick QML apps Testing File Size and Memory Consumption In this post, I’ll compare the file size and memory consumption of a simple "Hello World" application built with Qt Widgets and Qt Quick (QML). The goal is to see how each approach impacts the final executable size and runtime memory usage. I'll build both versions, deploy them, and measure their resource consumption to provide insights into which might be more suitable for lightw...
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Cross Platform Desktop Rust GUI App with Dear ImGui, Glium and Winit

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Building desktop GUI apps that work consistently across different operating systems presents several technical challenges. Dear ImGui combined with Glium and Winit provides a technical stack for cross-platform development. ImGui's immediate mode architecture regenerates the interface each frame, while Glium handles OpenGL context management across Windows, macOS, and Linux and Winit handles window creation, and input processing. Please note, the Glium library is no longer under active development. Refer to Glium post-mortem. This post examines a basic "Hello World" implementation using ImGui, Glium and Winit on the three major desktop platforms. The application demonstrates a simple counter interface with color customization and framerate display. Below, you'll find screenshots of the application running on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Each screenshot is paired with the corresponding OS task manager and file explorer, showing memory, CPU utilization and file si...
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Cross Platform Desktop C++ GUI App With Dear ImGui and GLFW

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Building desktop GUI apps that work consistently across different operating systems presents several technical challenges. Dear ImGui combined with GLFW provides a robust technical stack for cross-platform development. ImGui's immediate mode architecture regenerates the interface each frame, while GLFW handles window creation, input processing, and OpenGL context management across Windows, macOS, and Linux. This post examines a basic "Hello World" implementation using ImGui and GLFW on the three major desktop platforms. The application demonstrates a simple counter interface with color customization and framerate display. Below, you'll find screenshots of the application running on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Each screenshot is paired with the corresponding OS task manager and file explorer, showing memory, CPU utilization and file size on different operating systems. These comparisons provide insight into how the same codebase performs across different desktop e...
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Rust to JavaScript Cheat Sheet

A quick reference for translating common Rust features to JavaScript.
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Rust Cargo to Node.js NPM Cheat Sheet

A quick reference for translating common Rust Cargo commands to Node.js NPM.
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Bringing a react web app to the desktop with Electron, Tauri and OpenFin

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With the growing demand for more native-like web applications, companies are looking to desktop web container solutions like Electron, Tauri and OpenFin to evolve beyond the browser. Bringing a react web app to the desktop opens up possibilities like improving performance, integrating with native notifications, window management and an overall more flexible experience for apps with advanced user interfaces. The potential here is exciting because it allows businesses to leverage their existing web assets, tech stacks and developer expertise to deliver an experience that feels more powerful and responsive on the desktop. In this article, I will walk through bringing a web app to the desktop using frameworks such as Progressive Web App, OpenFin, Electron and Tauri. I will also use progressive enhancement techniques to enable a the basic experience when viewing the app in a browser and then detect when running in a desktop container for a more immersive experience on the desktop. Setting t...
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Cross-platform desktop app filesize comparison

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I am the author of Desktop MP3 , an offline music player focused on simplicity and ease-of-use.   The MacOS version is built using Objective-C with Storyboard, and the Windows versions is built using Electron.  In this article, I want to show the differences between binary file sizes using different cross platform desktop frameworks. Desktop MP3
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